


If You're Reading This

by SkyEverett



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, F/M, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-15 06:52:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3437657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyEverett/pseuds/SkyEverett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alice thought that she and Alfred would be able to raise a family together, but when your husband is a man that would lay his life down for his country, that is never possible. Songfic based on Tim McGraw's "If You're Reading This."</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You're Reading This

    It’s really quite strange how a trivial act—for example, the pulling of a trigger—can change someone’s life forever.  
  
    One Alice Kirkland had her life changed by a note.  Again, such a trivial thing.  
  
    She was sitting in a rocking chair, reading a book, and rubbing her oversize belly.  She had been pregnant for eight months now, and she smiled every time she thought of the time when she and the rest of her family would welcome the baby to the world.  
  
    But that is a story that is never going to be told.  
  
     _Ding, dong._  
  
    With effort, Alice went to the door and opened it to a strange sight indeed.  Two soldiers, wearing the military uniform of the army, stood there with grim expressions on their faces, and immediately Alice thought of Alfred.  
  
    Alfred.  Just saying the name aloud was like singing a song.  Her darling husband, a soldier and loyal to his country, left no more than one year ago.  “I’m gonna win the war for you, darlin’,” he had said.  “For you and the rest of our family.”  
  
    “Oh, hello,” she greeted.  “Is there something I can help you with?”  
  
    The two men, one brown-haired and one white, shared a look.  “My condolences, ma’am,” said the brown-haired man, taking off his hat to reveal a cowlick.  His deep purple eyes searched hers, but she remembered his own eyes being empty, with no emotions but minor sadness and discomfort.  “My name is Roderich Edelstein, and this is Gilbert Beilschmidt.  We’ve come from the warfront to tell you that…”  
  
    But that was all Alice could manage to hear, because then her heart was being squeezed by a cold, merciless fist, and she was gasping for breath, and the world had suddenly lost its colour, it had all been brought to a shuddering halt…  
  
    “No,” she found herself saying.  “No, you must have the wrong name…my husband is strong, he wouldn’t do this…”  
  
    But what were words?  Meaningless sounds that weaved lies around one who is unwilling to accept the cold, hard truth?  Or maybe something much more worse?  
  
    “…he said he wanted to give you this…”  Now Gilbert was holding out an envelope, and Alice took it, desperate for something of Alfred’s to hold on to.  Then she closed the door and sank into the soft couch.  
  
    Alfred wasn’t coming home.  Alfred was shot in the war.  Alfred was  _dead._  
  
    Alice couldn’t grieve, for fear she’d break into a million tiny shards if she opened her mouth to speak.  The tiny envelope was trembling in her hands, and she was afraid to open it—opening it would only confirm her greatest fears.  But after sitting there for an hour, she began to think it couldn’t be helped.  She was born an Englishwoman, after all.  They were supposed to soldier on.  
  
    With trembling hands, she opened the envelope.  A tag on a fine silver chain fell out.  It read  _Alfred F. Jones_  on one side, and the name of his regiment and unit on the other.  Without searching through the rest of the letter, she slipped the thin chain over her head—she didn’t want to lose this.  The next item was a golden locket—Alice remembered giving  it to him for his birthday—containing a picture of her, young and smiling eagerly at the camera.    
  
    The final item was a letter, folded four times.  She paused before she opened this.  Was it a telegram with the government’s apologies, or was it something of Alfred’s own making?  Slowly she unfolded it and began to read.  
  
     _If you’re reading this,  
    My momma’s sitting there  
    Looks like I only got a one-way ticket over here.  
    Sure wish I could give you one more kiss…  
    And war was just a game we played when we were kids.  
  
    I’m laying down my gun, and hanging up my boots  
    I’m up here with God and we’re both watching over you._  
  
    Alice didn’t cry at all during the funeral.  The gravediggers were a little surprised, however, at her request to bury him in a field instead of a cemetery.  But she insisted, and they relented, after a while.  She never told them why, and she never told them that this old field was the one he used to play in with his brother and ultimately the one she met him in.  
  
    She had met him while he and his brother were playing war.  How ironic.  
  
     _So lay me down_  
 _In that open field out on the edge of town._  
 _And know my soul_  
 _Is where my momma always prayed that it would go._  
 _If you’re reading this, I’m already home._  


* * *

  
  
    Alice looked up from her sewing when she heard Amelia’s helpless cries and rushed down the stairs to the little wooden crib her sisters had taken time to build for her.  Amelia smiled and held her chubby little hands up.  Returning her smile, Alice lifted her up and patted her back.  Amelia’s face lit up.  “Da…da?” she asked, struggling to get the words out.    
  
    Alice took a deep breath and tried to blink away her oncoming tears.  “No, Amelia darling,” she answered.  “You can’t see your father yet.  And I hope, for your sake, that I will be gone before you can see him.  But don’t worry,” she added hastily as Amelia’s blue eyes began to fill with tears.  “He can see us.  He’s watching over us right now.  And he’s very proud of you.”  
  
     _If you’re reading this, halfway around the world,  
    I won’t be there to see the birth of our little girl.  
    I hope she looks like you, and she fights like me.  
    And stands up for the innocent and the weak.  
    Now I’m laying down my gun, and hanging up my boots.  
    Tell Dad I don’t regret that I followed in his shoes._  
  
    Alice had told Arthur, the Englishman who had brought Alfred up, about his death.  Alfred had never known his real parents.  Arthur had been a soldier, and he had been the first person to give his consent to Alfred so that he could marry Alice.   _“It’s good that he likes you,”_ Alfred had said.   _“It usually takes a lot to have him approve of anything.”_  
  
     _“That foolish boy, running off to join the army…I told him he shouldn’t, but does he listen to an old man like me?  Of course not…”_   Then Arthur had smiled, shook his head, and said  _“I’m going to miss him like hell.”_  
  
     _So lay me down_  
 _In that open field out on the edge of town._  
 _And know my soul_  
 _Is where my momma always prayed that it would go._  
 _If you’re reading this, I’m already home._  


* * *

  
  
     _If you’re reading this, there’s gonna come a day  
    When you’ll move on and find someone else…and that’s OK._  
  
    Amelia traced her father’s name on the dog tag around her neck as she stood over his grave.  She wished she could have at least seen her father in person.  She knew her mother always saw him in her, but she wished that she had something else to hold on to other than his old dog tag.  She wasn’t sure about what was happening with her family now, though.  Alice’s nephew Peter had come to live with them.  She was happy to have a little brother, but she was nineteen now and busy with her own life.  And she wanted her mom to be happy, she really did, but she was going to have a hard time accepting Kiku into their family.  They had gotten married three years ago, and Amelia still couldn’t find it in herself to call him “Dad.”  
  
    She placed a few blue flowers on the grave in front of her and unfolded the old, crumbling letter that she and her mother had preserved for all these years, and hoped, honest-to-God hoped, that the last two lines of the letter were true.  
  
     _Just remember this: I’m in a better place  
    Where soldiers live in peace and angels sing ‘Amazing Grace.’_  
  
    “I don’t regret anything, Dad,” she whispered, adjusting the handguns in her belt and her aviator jacket.  “Mom said you would be proud.  I’ll just have to believe that you are, and that I’m doing the right thing for me and my family.”  She squatted down and traced the words _Alfred F. Jones_  on the smooth, cold gravestone.  “I won’t see you for a while, but I’ll come back, so this isn’t goodbye.  And…if I can’t take this…then at least I’ll get to see you in person.”    
  
    Smiling, she stood up and brushed herself off.  “Alright, soldier,” she ordered herself.  “About face.”  Then she turned on the spot and walked away from the field she visited almost every week.  She did not turn back.  She did not observe how the winds seemed to pick up.  She didn’t notice that a ghostly figure of a young man had appeared behind the gravestone with a proud smile on his face.  The vision was there only for a second before the autumn winds extinguished it.    
  
     _“Amelia Jones…I’ve never been so honored to call you my daughter.”_  


* * *

  
  
    “Kiku, Kiku, catch me!” Peter yelled, and ran towards the woods outside of their house.    
  
    Kiku looked at Alice warily.  “Should I…?”  
  
    “Go on,” encouraged Alice, patting him on the shoulder.  “You should get to know Peter better.  You’ve been trying so hard with Amelia…why don’t you spend some more time with Peter?”  Kiku nodded and proceeded to chase a laughing Peter into the woods.  “Don’t get lost,” she called after them, extremely worried that she had suddenly let Peter escape her sight.  
  
     _“I see…you’re finally living a happy life, my precious Alice.  Take good care of it…and be happy.”_  
  
    Alice’s head snapped up when she heard the tantalizingly familiar voice of her husband.  She could only catch a glimpse of Alfred standing in front of her and blowing her a kiss.  Alice frantically reached out to touch his face, but in another second the wind blew the apparition away.  “Alfred?” called Alice.  “Alfred?!”  But all she could hear was an echo of a loving goodbye as the autumn leaves danced in the wind.  
  
    And finally, after nineteen years, Alice allowed herself to grieve.   
  
     _So lay me down_  
  _In that open field out on the edge of town._  
 _And know my soul_  
 _Is where my momma always prayed that it would go._  
 _If you’re reading this…_  
  
 _…if you’re reading this…_  
  
  
    “I’m already home.”


End file.
